Hector Ruiz offers advice to Intel’s next CEO

Former AMD CEO Hector Ruiz has offered the next Intel CEO a few tips to keep Intel on top of the world. While most of them make quite a lot of sense, they are coming from Ruiz, whose tenure at AMD remains controversial to this day.

In an article published in Businessweek, Ruiz argues that Intel is no longer the company it was a decade ago, when it could use its dominant position to sway practically every aspect of the computing market in its favour. It is now seeing quite a bit of pressure from ARM chips, which power the vast majority of phones and tablets on the market.

His first word of advice is to remind the world that Intel is still in the computing business and to point out that tablets are merely an extension of PCs, based on different processors.

“There is no reason to let the media, Wall Street, or anyone else define Intel as purely a PC technology company,” wrote Ruiz. This is a good point, which was apparently lost on Intel.

His next tip might be a bit more controversial. Ruiz believes Intel should split its businesses and move toward becoming a portfolio company, with a big data business, PC business and a mobile business. He argues that Intel’s superior manufacturing capability would ensure success for the restructured businesses.

Next up – "don’t wait". Intel had the capacity to conquer the mobile market years ago, but it hesitated and opened the door to potential challengers. Ruiz points out that Motorola made the same mistakes and squandered the value it spend decades generating.

“Wall Street and the media may declare that the PC market is dead or that mobile is the future. The truth is that computing, in all its evolving forms, remains and will remain king,” said Ruiz. “The products consumers want will change whenever the industry innovates and offers something new and better. Intel should make its mission continuous innovation in computing of all kinds.”